People of the Whirlpool | Page 7

house in one of those swell streets, east of the park, where never less

than ten in help are kept. Well, if you'll believe it, she's living alone
with a pet dog and a companion, except in summer, when the Chicago
son and his wife and babies make her a good visit down at North East,
the only home comfort she has.
"All the girls married to foreigners? Not a blessed one. Two were
bookish and called literary, but not enough to break out into anything;
they didn't agree with society (had impossible foreheads that ran nearly
back to their necks, and thin hair); they went to college just to get the
name of it and to kill time, but when they got through they didn't rub
along well at home; called taking an interest in the house beneath them
and the pair that liked society frivolous; so they took a flat (I mean
apartment--a flat is when it's less than a hundred a month and only has
one bathroom), and set up for bachelor girls. The younger pair did
society for a while, and poor Mrs. Townley chaperoned round after
them, as befitted her duty and position, and had gorgeous Worth gowns,
all lace and jets, that I do believe shortened her breath, until one night
in a slippery music-room she walked up the back of a polar bear rug,
fell off his head, and had an awful coast on the floor, that racked her
knee so that she could stay at home without causing remark, which she
cheerfully did. The two youngest girls were pretty, but they were snobs,
and carried their money on their sleeves in such plain sight that they
were too suspicious, and seemed to expect every man that said 'good
evening' was waiting to grab it. So they weren't popular, and started off
for Europe to study art and music. Of course when they came back they
had a lot of lingo about the art atmosphere and all that; home was a
misfit and impossible, so they went to live in a swell studio with two
maids and a Jap butler in costume, and do really give bang-up musicals,
with paid talent of course. I went to one.
"That left Georgie, the odd one, who was the eldest, with poor Mrs.
Townley. By this time the old lady was kind of broken-spirited, and
worried a good deal as to why all her girls left her,--'she'd always tried
to do her duty,'--and all that. This discouraged Georgie; she got blue
and nervous, had indigestion, and, mistaking it for religion, vamoosed
into a high-church retreat. And I call it mighty hard lines for the old
lady."
I thought "too much money," but I didn't say it, for this brutally direct
but well-meaning woman could not imagine such a thing, and she

continued: "Yet Mrs. Townley had a soft snap compared to some, for
she was in the right set at the start, with both feet well up on the ladder,
and didn't have to climb; but Heaven help those with daughters who
have thin purses and have to stretch a long neck and keep it stiff, so, in
a crowd at least, nobody'll notice their feet are dangling and haven't any
hold.
"Ah, but this isn't the worst yet; that's the clever 'new daughter' kind
that sticks by her ma, who was herself once a particular housekeeper,
and takes charge of her long before there's any need; regulates her
clothes and her food and her callers, drags her around Europe to
rheumatism doctors, and pushes her into mud baths; jerks her south in
winter and north in summer, for her 'health and amusement,' so she
needn't grow narrow, when all the poor soul needs and asks is to be let
stay in her nice old-fashioned country house, and have the village
children in to make flannel petticoats; entertain the bishop when he
comes to confirm, with a clerical dinner the same as she used to; spoil a
lot of grandchildren, of which there aren't any; and once in a while to
be allowed to go into the pantry between meals, when the butler isn't
looking, and eat something out of the refrigerator with her fingers to
make sure she's got them!
"No, my dear, rather than that, I choose the lap dog and poor relation,
who is generally too dejected to object to anything. Besides, lap dogs
are much better now than in the days when the choice lay only between
sore-eyed white poodles and pugs. Boston bulls are such darlings that
for companions they beat half the people one knows!"
I am doubly glad that the twins are boys! Well, so be it, for women do
often frighten me and I misunderstand them, but men are so